Council grills Rikers leadership
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The crisis on Rikers Island was at the center of a City Council budget hearing where the Department of Correction asked for a $106 million increase on Wednesday, March 23, 2022. AP file photo by Seth Wenig
By Jacob Kaye
Coming on the heels of three detainee deaths and a report that accused the city of freezing out the federal monitor team appointed to oversee Rikers Island, it was little surprise that lawmakers blasted Department of Correction officials for the crisis in the city’s jails Wednesday during a budget hearing.
DOC Commissioner Louis Molina, who is about two months into the job, appeared before the City Council’s Committee on Criminal Justice this week to discuss the department’s financial plan for the coming year. The DOC, one of only a handful of agencies not to be identified for cut backs in Mayor Eric Adams’ proposed city budget, is seeking a budget increase of over $106 million when compared to the current fiscal year 2022 budget.
But councilmembers questioning the agency Wednesday showed little interest in meeting the request. Due to the current levels of violence in the jail, the monitor’s accusation that the DOC had stopped sharing as much information and general accusations of mismanagement, lawmakers said they don’t see how more money will bring any sort of peace to Rikers.
“You come in front of this committee with little to no answers and want to say that under your leadership the situation at Rikers Island is being addressed and resolved in direct contravention of what the federal monitor has been stating,” said Queens Councilmember Shekar Krishnan. “I find that shocking.”
Throughout the hearing, councilmembers condemned Molina and DOC leadership for not having data related to a number of issues identified by Steve Martin, the federal monitor, in recent months. Lawmakers asking about staffing numbers, medical appointments for incarcerated people and services offered to the incarcerated population were told that they’d have to wait for answers.
“Commissioner Molina, the only thing you're missing today are the numbers,” Criminal Justice Chair Carlina Rivera said. “You owe me that.”
The budget hearing follows the release of a status update from the federal monitor, which was filed in federal court last week. It was the first report issued under the Adams administration and under Molina’s leadership. One of Molina’s first acts as commissioner was to fire Sarena Townsend, who served as the department’s deputy commissioner for Intelligence and Investigation. In her former role, Townsend investigated incidents of staff misconduct and acted as a conduit to the monitoring team.
The monitor said that DOC officials had, in some cases, purposefully not shared information with the monitoring team, despite being mandated by law to do so.
“The monitoring team is incredibly disappointed to report that it has lost confidence that it has access to all of the relevant and reliable information necessary to perform its duties,” the report read. “It is unclear whether there is a concerted effort to minimize the information being shared with the monitoring team or whether the individuals responsible for coordinating with the monitoring team are not privy to the relevant information. Either way, the lack of open and transparent communication and information is deeply troubling.”
“The department’s current approach to working with the monitoring team is counterproductive and circumvents obligations to consult with the monitor and to ensure that new practices or tools do not run afoul of Nunez requirements,” the report continued. “This type of faulty, untenable approach—of avoiding consultation and hiding the discovery of problems—seriously compromises the monitoring team’s confidence in the information it is provided.”
Molina defended his agency Wednesday against the accusations of obfuscation.
“The idea that there's a total breakdown of communication is a gross exaggeration,” Molina said. “The Department of Corrections continually provides voluminous amounts of information to the monitoring team.”
Staffing shortage
While Rikers Island has been in one form of crisis or another at any given time throughout the past several decades, its current acute crisis began boiling over last summer.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio and former DOC Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi laid the blame at the feet of the thousands of uniformed correctional officers who were missing work in high volumes. While many were out on sick leave, hundreds began going AWOL, leading to an increase in violence in the jail and an increase in the number of double and triple shifts to be worked by the officers who continued coming to work, the officials said.
It’s unclear how much of a staffing shortage the department still faces following Wednesday’s hearing. The majority of the DOC’s budget increase is tied to staffing, particularly increases to overtime pay, which accounts for over one third of the agency’s budget increase.
Currently, around 30 percent of the department’s staff is unavailable for work, giving it the largest absence rate of any city agency.
Our overtime spending will be comparable to what we spent in fiscal year 17,” Molina said. “As we see staff returning to work, we are moving towards reducing the reliance on overtime where practicable.”
But exactly how many staff members are returning to work is unclear.
“I don't have a forecast of how many staff will return by the end of the fiscal year because there's a lot that goes into why many of these members are out,” Molina said. “I can tell you that over 1,300 staff have come back from sick leave and that has had a positive impact.”
In the recent report from the federal monitor, Martin noted that while around 1,000 staff returned to work in January, that was following the peak of the staff absenteeism crisis.
“The decrease observed at the end of January 2022, simply returned the number of unavailable staff to August 2021 levels, a level that had already been established as a significant crisis,” the monitor wrote.
Spikes in violence
The rate of violence, both from incarcerated people and officers alike, has skyrocketed in the past year. Violence committed by incarcerated people increased 22 percent from 2020 to 2021 and violence committed by officers increased by 10 percent, according to the department’s budget report.
But while violence increases in the jails, punishment for both incarcerated people and staff is in a state of limbo.
The DOC is required, under state law, to transition from using solitary confinement to the Risk Management Accountability System. The Board of Corrections, the DOC’s oversight body, had set a deadline for implementation last year, but the deadline was postponed when de Blasio issued an executive order explaining that due to the staffing crisis, RMAS would have to wait.
Adams has extended the executive order each week of his mayoralty.
On Wednesday, Molina said that the department is aiming to implement the alternative to solitary confinement, which allows for more out of cell time, more programming and less isolation, in July.
The delay of its implementation stems from the need to build the new cells and train staff to offer the programming laid out in the system’s foundation. But Molina added that he doesn’t fully agree with the implementation of the new program.
“When I reviewed what was then the prior administration's plan for RMAS, I had disagreements with how it was laid out,” Molina said.
There’s also the issue of punishing staff. The department currently has a backlog of around 3,500 disciplinary cases, according to Molina. Additionally, the department has vacancies for positions related to reviewing disciplinary cases.
“I think realistically, clearing that backlog by the end of the fiscal year is not a reasonable expectation,” Molina said. “I'm just being upfront about that.”
Will Rikers close?
Last year, the City Council passed the Renewable Rikers Act, which builds on the city’s plan to close Rikers Island by 2027. The legislation requires that the DOC transfer portions of the island to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services every six months until August 2027.
But the DOC’s ability to transfer land and unused facilities was called into question Wednesday by councilmembers.
The department had to open up two unused facilities to house incarcerated people as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing requirements, as well as an increase in the jail’s population, which had been trending down in recent years.
Molina said that he couldn’t commit to closing them any time soon.
“I think it's hard for me to comment on that right now, given our current state that our incarcerated population has increased and has not met the population forecast that was originally given out by [the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice] under the previous administration,” Molina said. “But we're evaluating how we move forward regarding [the Eric M. Taylor Center] and [the Otis Bantum Correctional Center], as far as their ability to operate, and we can continue to keep you abreast on that progress”
